The Dish’s Weekly News Wrap Up

In January 2012, Madeleine, 2, became the first child to undergo an experimental hearing loss treatment through an FDA-approved trial at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center that infused stem cells from her own banked cord blood into her damaged inner ear.

A gene that causes the rare, early-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease can also carry a mutation that produces the opposite effect, staving off the devastating illness, scientists announced on Wednesday.

After several years of slowing growth, the global medicines market is poised to rebound from an expected low of 3%-4% growth in 2012 to 5%-7% in 2016, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

A world-renowned Australian stem cell expert working on a cure for HIV says their research is about to progress to human trials. He said if the trials were successful further research would be needed to modify the technology so it could be affordably used where it is needed most, in Africa.

For more than 20 years, doctors have been using cells from blood that remains in the placenta and umbilical cord after childbirth to treat a variety of illnesses, from cancer and immune disorders to blood and metabolic diseases. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have found a new way—using a single protein, known as a transcription factor—to convert cord blood (CB) cells into neuron-like cells that may prove valuable for the treatment of a wide range of neurological conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury.